The Once and Future King

Thursday, April 9, 2009

The first artist that caught my eye when looking at new artists was Hannah Stouffer. I like her chaotic crammed compositions and her use of animals in her work though it sometimes veers into what I like to call mtv art. George Grie is a surrealist artist and I like how he depicts buildings in his work as well as the overall sense of desolation. Jacek Yerka is a polish artist that was the real find . I love his detailed paintings and that theyre strange yet accessible even playful.

Monday, April 6, 2009

For my new series Ive been thinking a lot of creation myths. Ive always found it fascinating that there are giant beings such as Ouroborous or the turtle or elephant that supports the world on its back. This scale shift always entertained me as how these giant animals existed before the planet itself. I also was intrigued by the little planet that was in the children's book The Little Prince . Lately people have been creating horizon photos in a circular fashion so that they resemble such little planets so I have been looking at those as well, not to mention those Yes album covers by Roger Dean that I used to copy as a kid.

Looking at these different influences I have cobbled together a concept centered on the swirling chaos that happens before the formation of planets as well as after their destruction. Animals figures and trees that are disporportionately large will occupy chucks of rock, tiny planets, and other spindrift set against empty nothingness, the remains of a catastrophe or conversely the moment before the players are brought together in the creation of a new world. Though I would depict the imagery realistically I want to incorporate filigree and other designs like Ive used in previous paintings to enhance the feeling of movement in the images

I would like the main images to be paintings, but being a print maker I plan on either making line drawings of the main images before painting them and making prints off of those or creating prints that support the subject matter.

I plan on working on wood panel that are irregular size with three large panels in the center with smaller pieces radiating out from the center to enhance the swirling feeling of the imagery. I will use acrylic with gouache and would like to have at least five paintings with the largest being three by three feet then decreasing in size from there.

This is a record of my progress in my senior studio class for college here I will record my process in creating a series of work. I will publish not only the works in progress but also my thought process; my influences, the artists that Im looking at, as well as other things that catch my interest that are relevant to my work. To start off with here are some images from the past year or so that reflect what I want to do in my work. There are two painting series of three paintings as well as various prints.